Statewide bike path beckons

Tuesday

Oct 8, 2013 at 12:01 AMOct 8, 2013 at 10:18 AM

Jody Dzuranin envisions a day when Ohioans stop driving to faraway beaches and other vacation destinations and pedal their way to some of the state's hidden destinations instead. With more than 85 percent of a 330-mile trail linking Cincinnati and Cleveland finished, and a key leg through Columbus on the schedule to wrap up in the next two years, her dream is inching closer to coming true, she said.

Rick Rouan, The Columbus Dispatch

Jody Dzuranin envisions a day when Ohioans stop driving to faraway beaches and other vacation destinations and pedal their way to some of the state’s hidden destinations instead.

With more than 85 percent of a 330-mile trail linking Cincinnati and Cleveland finished, and a key leg through Columbus on the schedule to wrap up in the next two years, her dream is inching closer to coming true, she said.

“My hope is that this will attract visitors to Ohio from other states and countries and even people in Ohio instead of vacationing in Myrtle Beach,” said Dzuranin, of the local advocacy group Consider Biking. “We have this amazing asset right here.”

That asset has been more than 20 years in the making.

Since 1991, the Ohio to Erie Trail has been built in sections — a few miles here, a few miles there — and it has about 45 miles to go before it is completely paved with asphalt or covered in crushed limestone.

Undeveloped chunks and shared road routes link swaths of paved trail across the state, and the last miles of the Camp Chase Trail will link Downtown Columbus to a continuous stretch of paved trail all the way to Cincinnati.

“The parts that are left are left because they’re difficult to do,” said Jerry Rampelt, the executive director of the Ohio to Erie Trail Fund. “Getting a trail through an urban area is more difficult than a rural area.”

The Camp Chase trail runs along the Camp Chase railroad starting at Wilson Road in Madison County and extends about 5.5 miles east to Battelle Darby Creek Metro Park. The section between the park and Galloway is under construction, and a stretch between Galloway and Sullivant Avenue, including a bridge over I-270, is scheduled to be built next year.

“We see a huge, huge usage on the weekends of the section beginning at Big Darby Creek and Battelle Darby Creek and going out west toward London,” said Steve Brown, chief landscape architect for Metro Parks.

Metro Parks is building the trail west of Sullivant, and Columbus will build a 3.5-mile link east toward the Hilltop Connector at McKinley Avenue, which ultimately links to the Scioto Trail.

Construction is to start next year on that last section of the trail; the entire path should be finished in 2016, said Brad Westall, the city’s greenways planner. The city has about $1.2 million of the $3 million it needs to lay the trail, which will use an existing railroad viaduct to cross over Broad Street. The city also is weighing whether to build a trail hub in a 48-acre West Side park through which the Camp Chase Trail will run, Westall said.

When the trial is finished, it also will join the West Side to Downtown, he said.

“The chance of joining the West Side, which is one-fourth of the city, to a major Midwest regional trail network is a benefit not only to folks who live there but (also) in terms of accessing schools, accessing parks, and in terms of having a really simple, great, healthy way to get Downtown,” Westall said.